Page 64 of Katabasis
“Oh, love.” Elspeth shook her head. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Tell us what?”
“You don’t reincarnate if you die in Hell. Hell already operates on another metaphysical plane. We’re all soul stuff here. When you die in Hell, it’s not just your mortal body that disintegrates—it’s your soul stuff, too.” She smacked her chest. “All this, it dissipates. If you die down here, that’s it for you. Total annihilation of the self.”
“But nobody said,” said Alice.
“Because nobody knows. All the sojourners’ accounts are by people who made it back, aren’t they? Survivorship bias, and all that. But I’ve seen it. The death of the soul. I’ve seen the Kripkes murder a soul, in fact. They do it to Shades, too. They’ve figured out how. It’s a horrible process. The screams alone. It’s always a small explosion, when a soul destructs.”
Peter was silent.
Alice, still gazing over the dunes, thought to the creatures in the Weaver Girl’s web. Those contorted figures. She hadn’t let any of her lovers move on, either. Just kept stringing them along, wringing them for shreds of entertainment, until. Until.
“Anyway,” Elspeth said brightly. “Who’s hungry?”
They stared blankly at her.
“Starving, aren’t you?” Elspeth was pushing their boat toward the shore. Alice had not paid attention to the direction of their sailing; she knew only that they had skirted round the perilous cliffs and were back on flat, monotonous banks. “You’ve got to be. I assume you’re living on Lembas Bread; nothing else keeps. But that’s no way to get your nutrients.”
“True,” said Alice. “But what—”
“Splendid! Let’s have dinner.”
“I thought you didn’t need to eat,” said Peter.
“Course not.” Elspeth scratched the back of Archimedes’s head. “But I do need to feed this one. How do you feel about rats?”
Neither Peter nor Alice knew how to respond to this.
Elspeth laughed. “The traps are just across the bank. I won’t be five. Don’t unmoor the boat and don’t wander off.” She slung her perfume-spritzer staff over her back, then clambered up onto the railing. “More spray bottles under the deck if you need them. Stay dry!”
In one graceful movement she sprang off the side of the boat and landed clean on the shore. She turned, tossed them a wave, and then vanished at a sprint over the dunes.
For a moment Alice and Peterstood side by side, watching the empty shore. The silence was excruciating.
“Well.” She glanced over at him. “Gosh. What a day.”
He said nothing.
He was furious; that was clear.
Alice had never known Peter’s anger before. For most of their career she hadn’t known it was possible for Peter Murdoch to get angry. Always he wore that affable smile in lab; when undergraduates made a mess of his pentagrams, he only cheered them up and then slowly, patiently instructed them on how to do things right. Everyone else in the department kept grudges, snapped occasionally when they were running low on sleep. There were always apologies going on at their department—I’m sorry I said you were a ninny, I didn’t mean it, I don’t think you’re a ninny. But never Peter.
So she did not know what to do with his stonewalling. She wished he would shout, rage, curse at her, or beat his fists. Anything was better than this stony sulk.
“Can we talk?” Her voice came out very small. “Murdoch?”
He would not turn to look at her. “Can’t stop you, can I?”
“I’m sorry for back there.”
“Oh, you are?”
A lump formed in her throat. “I didn’t mean to—I just lookeddown, and—”
“And the apple jumped into your hand?” Peter snorted. “We had a plan, Law. It was so easy.”
“I know, I just—”
